DHS Secretary Says Democratic Senator Deserved to Get Pepper-Sprayed

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin blamed New Jersey Senator Andy Kim for being attacked by federal law enforcement.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Mullin pointed the finger at Kim, who was among dozens of demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed outside Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center in Newark. The crowd was protesting in solidarity with immigrant detainees engaged in a hunger strike over their conditions.

“Now you have one of the senators complained because he got splattered with a, you know, with a pepper ball,” Mullin said. “I’m sorry, you probably shouldn’t have been there.”

Mullin also offered an outrageous denial to reports of the ongoing hunger strike that was as ridiculous as it was racist.

“There was only a handful of individuals that was refusing to eat, because they want their ethnic group—or their ethnic-right food. Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want,” Mullin said. “The fact is, we’re giving them the calories they want. This isn’t Holiday Inn. We’re giving them sanitation.”

In reality, demonstrators have alleged that the detainees at Delaney Hall have been denied sufficient food, sanitary facilities, and medical care.

One Guatemalan man held at Delaney Hall told the group of protesters via video call Monday that nearly 300 other detainees had decided to “stop eating and stop working” indefinitely, in order to demand improvements to the inhumane conditions inside the facility, according to NJ.com. “But that’s not all we demand,” the man said. “We are also doing this to demand freedom.”

Selenia Destefani, a managing attorney and CEO of Nova Law Group, which is representing the detainees at Delaney Hall, also described the “brutal” conditions. “People just sleep on the floor—overcrowded rooms, cold showers, no food, extremely cold in the cells with no blankets,” she said. “Not sound conditions to live in.”

Soto Hernandez, one of the detainees held at the privately operated immigration detention facility, has been served spoiled food with worms in it, according to Destefani.

Kim, who visited Delaney Hall Monday, reported that the bathrooms were “filthy,” that it was difficult to get hot water, and that each room housed 12 to 16 people.

Other members of Trump’s administration haven’t gone so far as to deny the hunger strike. Speaking on Fox News Tuesday night, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan appeared to confirm that there was a hunger strike. “Hunger strikes never work. We’re not gonna change what we do because someone goes on a hunger strike,” Homan said, adding that if conditions were dire enough, federal immigration enforcement would obtain a court order to “force feed” detainees.

Half a year since a 60 Minutes segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was cut last-minute by CBS News boss Bari Weiss, the journalist reporting the piece has lost her job.

Sharyn Alfonsi had worked with 60 Minutes for over a decade. On Wednesday morning, she told The New York Times that CBS News allowed her contract to expire while ignoring her agent for weeks, and that her dismissal was a “deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting.”

CBS News has not publicly commented on the news so far.

Since Weiss, a former opinion columnist, took over as editor in chief of the TV network’s news division, her tenure has been marred by clashes with CBS’s more experienced reporters. The biggest of these came in December 2025, when she pulled a report on the suffering of Venezuelans deported to CECOT prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration, arguing the story wasn’t balanced enough. She also suggested the reporters reach out to Stephen Miller, the fascist curmudgeon behind Trump’s deportation policies, for an interview.

Alfonsi wrote an angry email bashing the decision that was subsequently leaked to the press. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct,” Alfonsi wrote. “In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Alfonsi alleged it was not explained to her why the story was killed, and noted that she had tried to get comment from the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the White House, but was rebuffed each time.

“If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast,” Alfonsi concluded.

Weiss’s tenure has also coincided with the departure of the most famous 60 Minutes staffer of all: Anderson Cooper, who bounced in February. In his final episode, Cooper stressed the importance of the program’s editorial freedom, in remarks seen as a jab at Weiss and CBS.

CBS News has long permitted 60 Minutes to work independently of the rest of the network, but Alfonsi told the Times she saw the tides turning. “For the last 60 years it’s been the same formula: Tell the truth, hold the power accountable, don’t blink,” she said. “It’s unclear what next season looks like.”

Alfonsi is technically still employed at CBS but doesn’t plan to work without a contract. Instead, the longtime correspondent is hunkering down. “I’m not resigning,” she told the Times. “If they want me gone because I did my job, they’ll have to fire me.”

After his third medical checkup in 13 months, and a delusional all-out blitz from his social media team defending him, President Trump has once again fallen asleep on camera in the middle of a Cabinet meeting, on Wednesday.

The president could be seen with his eyes closed for a prolonged period of time while sitting right next to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. And he seemed to struggle to keep them open while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke, as well.

This comes just one day after the administration’s Rapid Response 47 X account spent hours lambasting various CNN hosts for blinking or looking down, equating it to Trump’s obvious naps. But people aren’t that stupid—the president is an old man, turning 80 in a matter of days, and sometimes he’ll doze off in a meeting. And we should be having these conversations about his health because his naps, swollen ankles, and mysterious bruises, as well as the constant denial from his team about them, only makes the situation more alarming.

This is at least the eighth time President Trump has fallen asleep on camera this year.

After campaigning on a promise of “no new wars,” President Donald Trump just threatened to bomb yet another country.

During a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, a reporter asked Trump whether he would accept a short-term deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that would allow Iran and Oman to control the essential passageway for global trade. Trump claimed that “nobody” would control the Strait of Hormuz, but that the U.S. would “watch over it.”

“It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ’em up,” Trump said. “They understand that, they’ll be fine.”

The so-called peace president’s remarks were shockingly violent, and at odds with other reports.

The U.S. and Iran are reportedly finalizing a draft “memorandum of understanding” that would require the U.S. military to withdraw its forces from the region and lift the blockade on Iranian ports, according to a report on IRIB, Iranian state television. In return Iran, in cooperation with Oman, would restore trade through the Strait of Hormuz to prewar levels within one month.

The White House pushed back against the report Wednesday morning, calling it “a complete fabrication.”

A Democratic House candidate running in Texas raised eyebrows when she promised to turn an ICE detention facility into a “prison for American Zionists.” It turns out she was bankrolled by a major GOP fundraiser.

Maureen Galindo’s candidacy was anything but normal: The sex therapist faced national criticism for her antisemitic remarks, which involved pledging to turn ICE centers into “castration processing” facilities “for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.”

Galindo nonetheless shocked state Democrats when she placed first in the March 3 primary—although not by enough to avoid a runoff.

Shortly afterward, Galindo’s small campaign—which had just a few thousand dollars in the tank—was infused with nearly $1 million from a mysterious super PAC, Lead Left, which was formed on April 24. The enormous donation forced Democrats to contend with the possibility that Galindo could actually win the Democratic nomination in Texas’s 35th congressional district, which was recently gerrymandered in order to heavily favor Republican candidates.

Lead Left went to great lengths to conceal the identities and political affiliations of its backers, though it proudly announced on its website that it “stands against MAGA extremists who will infect our country with Donald Trump’s agenda.” New reporting, however, reveals that’s not so likely.

Galindo’s windfall came by way of Caleb Crosby, the treasurer of the Congressional Leadership Fund, which serves as the primary super PAC of the House Republicans, Judd Legum reported via his Popular Information substack Wednesday. Crosby also serves as the treasurer of the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC for Senate Republicans.

Several details ultimately tie Crosby to the fundraising venture: Some of his other entities, connected to his political compliance firm Crosby Ottenhoff Group, share the same address as Lead Left, according to Legum.

Nebraska Public Media also found that the original Lead Left website included a snippet of code that linked out to WinRed, the predominant Republican fundraising website.

But the race to fill the Texas House seat isn’t the only campaign where Lead Left has inserted itself. The secretive super PAC also intervened in Democratic primaries in critical races in Nebraska and Pennsylvania, and has spent more than $2.4 million to date on political ads targeting Democratic primary races across the country.

Earlier this month, the Campaign Legal Center, or CLC, accused Lead Left PAC of violating federal reporting rules by funneling its money through two newly formed shell companies, Piruzi LLC and OTG Media LLC, in what the CLC claimed was an attempt to “conceal the actual vendors” and undermine “crucial electoral transparency for voters.”